Give skateboarders a home

EXAMINER EDITORIAL WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Friday, June 18, 1999

1999-06-18 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- DESPITE LONGSTANDING efforts by The City to crack down on scofflaw skateboarders and stop the mounting damage they do to public property, the hills and paved plazas of San Francisco remain an irresistible lure to practitioners of the sport. They come from the rest of the Bay Area, the nation and the world to gather in such favored spots as Justin Herman Plaza, the Embarcadero, around the New Main Library and Bank of America building and other places offering stone and concrete launching platforms.

Police keep issuing $76 tickets, confiscating skateboards and occasionally throwing repeat violators in jail when they fail to pay fines, but the clackety conveyances and their acrobatic users keep multiplying. Special skateboard parks as a home for this activity are the obvious answer to the problem. The City so far offers only one such site in Bayview-Hunters Point, and plans another at Crocker Amazon Park - both too remote from the excitement of Downtown to draw significant numbers of 'boarders.

It's time to work seriously on a skateboarding venue in the eastern sector of Golden Gate Park. The socializing aspect of the sport is important to practitioners, and this busy part of the park is close to the weekend rollerblading scene on Kennedy Drive and to skateboarding shops in the Haight.

Such an officially sanctioned place for skateboarding might not eliminate illegal skating in other parts of town, but the damage to walkways and benches would be reduced to the extent the activity is transferred to the park. And The City would be in a firmer moral position to continue its crackdown on violators.&lt;